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Indonesian Muslims Call for Halt to ‘Christianization’

Muslim organizations in Bekasi, West Java, on Sunday (June 27) declared their intention to establish paramilitary units in local mosques and a “mission center” to oppose “ongoing attempts to convert people to Christianity,” according to the national Antara news agency.

Sat, Jul. 03, 2010 Posted: 07:00 PM EDT

DUBLIN (Compass Direct News) – Muslim organizations in Bekasi, West Java, on Sunday (June 27) declared their intention to establish paramilitary units in local mosques[NOTE: Another proof that mosques are NOT like churches!] and a “mission center” to oppose “ongoing attempts to convert people to Christianity,” according to the national Antara news agency.

At a gathering at the large Al Azhar mosque, the leaders of nine organizations announced the results of a Bekasi Islamic Congress meeting on June 20, where they agreed to establish a mission center to halt “Christianization,” form a Laskar Pemuda youth army and push for implementation of sharia (Islamic law) in the region, The Jakarta Post reported.[NOTE: All religious Moslems are required to push for the implementation of sharia law — through the whole world!]

“If the Muslims in the city can unite, there will be no more story about us being openly insulted by other religions,” Ahmad Salimin Dani, head of the Bekasi Islamic Missionary Council, announced at the gathering. “The center will ensure that Christians do not act out of order.”

Observing an increasing number of house churches, Muslim organizations have accused Bekasi Christians of aggressive proselytizing. The Rev. Simon Timorason of the West Java Christian Communication Forum (FKKB), however, told Compass that most Christians in the area do not proselytize and meet only in small home fellowships due to the lack of officially recognized worship venues.

Many Christian seminary graduates prefer to remain on Java rather than relocate to distant islands, Timorason added, making West Java the ideal place to launch new home-based fellowships for different denominations. But neighbors see only the multiplication of churches, he said, and therefore suspect Muslims are converting to the Christian faith.

“The ideal solution is to have one building with a permit to be used by different denominations in each housing complex,” Timorason said. “If every denomination wants their own church in the same area, it’s a problem.”

Declaration of Intent
Kanti Prajogo, chairman of the Congress committee, had hoped to present a written declaration of intent to city officials at the mosque gathering, but officials did not respond to his invitation, according to The Jakarta Post.

Around 200 people attended the June 20 Congress, representing local organizations such as the Bekasi Interfaith Dialogue Forum, the Bekasi Movement Against Apostasy, [NOTE: According to standard Islamic law, apostasy is punishable by death.] the local chapters of Muhammadiyah and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) – two of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organizations – and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), well known for its aggressive opposition to Christians and other non-Muslim groups.

Government officials on Monday (June 28) called for the FPI to be declared a forbidden organization, claiming that FPI members were implicated in “too many” violent incidents.

“We are not concerned about their mission,” legislator Eva Kusuma Sundari reportedly said at a press conference in Jakarta, “but we are concerned about the way they implement their goals.” [NOTE: The government agrees with their goals; the government only opposes their tactics.]

A spokesman for another large organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said Tuesday (July 28) that despite one member being present at the congress in an unofficial capacity, NU had not approved the joint declaration, contradicting a statement made the previous day by Bekasi NU official Abul Mutholib Jaelani, who told The Jakarta Post that he had asked all 56 NU branches in the city to contribute at least 10 members to the youth army.

Contributing to Religious Conflict
Rapid residential and industrial development has created huge social problems in Bekasi. Sociologist Andi Sopandi of Bekasi Islamic University told The Jakarta Post that the call for sharia was a warning signal, and that local officials should urgently pursue dialogue between Muslim and Christian leaders.

Locals and newcomers will get along well only if they share similar basic values, particularly religious ones, Sopandi reportedly said, pointing to sharp disputes over the Filadelfia Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) church in Jejalen Jaya sub-district earlier this year as an example.

A neighbor of the church confessed to The Jakarta Post that local clerics had asked him and other residents to sign a petition against constructing the HKBP church building and threatened not to pray at their funerals if they failed to cooperate; the majority of his neighbors signed the document under duress.

Under a 2006 Joint Ministerial Decree (SKB), at least 60 local residents must approve the establishment of a house of worship, whether a mosque or a church. The congregation must also have at least 90 members and obtain letters of recommendation from the local interfaith communication forum (FKUB) and religious affairs office before gaining final approval from district officials.

These terms make it virtually impossible for churches in Bekasi to obtain building permits. Bekasi regency has a population of 1.9 million, of which 98.2 percent are Muslim, according to 2006 data from the Bekasi Regency Religious Affairs office. Protestants, who form 0.67 percent (approximately 12,700 people) of the population, and Catholics who make up 0.55 percent, are served by only 16 officially recognized churches in seven of the 23 sub-districts.

Sudarno Soemodimedjo, deputy chief of the Bekasi FKUB, told The Jakarta Post in February that even if a church construction committee gained the approval of 60 local residents, the FKUB would not issue a letter of recommendation if there were any public objections.

“The SKB orders us to maintain public order, which means we have to refuse the establishment of a house of worship we believe may trigger a conflict in the future,” he said. [NOTE: No blame on Moslems for triggering the conflict. Only blame Christians for building a church.]

As a result, many Christians meet in unrecognized worship venues, giving Muslim groups legal grounds to oppose church gatherings.

“If the SKB was applied consistently, many mosques that were built without permits would have to close,” Timorason told Compass.

The government wants each new settlement to have a place of worship, he added, “but it’s always a mosque. There should be one of each to be fair.”

“Violations against freedom of religion remain rampant [in Indonesia],” confirmed the chairman of the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, who goes by the single name of Hendardi, at a press conference announcing the release of its January 2010 “Report on the Condition of Religious and Faith Freedom in Indonesia.”

“This is mostly because the government is half-hearted in its upholding of the right to worship,” he said.

Of 139 violations recorded by the institute last year, West Java took first place with 57 incidents, followed closely by Jakarta at 38.

Harry Potter and Sharia Law?

Joshua Jamison

There is no place for Sharia Law in western democracies. Muslims who practice it need to find another place to live. Rape, torture and murder are no more than cowardice criminal acts and must be prevented at all cost. Her own father and brother recently threatened Afshan Azad, an actress in the hit series Harry Potter. Asian News has more:

Afshan Azad who played Padma Patel in Harry Potter
The father and brother of an actress who starred in the Harry Potter films have been charged with threatening to kill her.

Afshan Azad, 22, has appeared in four of the movies as Padma Patil, a classmate of the young wizard.

She was allegedly attacked at her home in Longsight, Manchester, on May 21 this year.

Now her father Abdul Azad, 54, and brother, Ashraf Azad, 28, both of Beresford Road, Longsight, have appeared in court.

Abdul is accused of threatening to kill his daughter and Ashraf of threatening to kill and assault occasioning actual bodily harm against his sister.

Both men appeared at Manchester magistrates court and the case was adjourned until later this month for committal proceedings to crown court.

Josh Jamison lives in Boston, Massachusetts and writes for The Raw Deal

Diffusing the present dangerous confrontation between Islam and the West demands rational impartial and cool heads to untangle facts from myth, understand the Muslims’ mindset, and redress any grievances on either side.The Muslims’ perennial complaint is that the imperialist West—all colonial powers of the past, as well as the United States of America—have victimized them for decades and even centuries and continue to do so in every conceivable way. The litany of the alleged wrongdoings by the West is encyclopedic. To begin with, the West has shown utter contempt for the legitimate rights of the Muslim nation by arbitrarily dividing much of the Islamic land into fractured entities, plundering its resources, and topping these crimes by installing in its midst its illegitimate stepchild of Israel—a huge thorn in their side, so they complain. “A grain of truth is needed to make a mountain of lies believable,” is an old saw. In fairness to Muslims, there is some substance to their claims against the West. For now, let us focus on the general mindset of Muslims which bears heavily on the hostility toward the West—a serious hostility that may bring about the dreaded Armageddon.* Patriarchy and authoritarianism: The Muslim’s mind is imprinted with authoritarianism which starts with the supreme authority, Allah, through his one and only prophet, Muhammad, his Caliphs or Imams, and the high-ranking religious divines all the way down to the village clergy. This authoritarian mentality encompasses all aspects of life for the Muslim. The king and his dominion as the viceroy of God, the Emir and his despotic ways, the Khan and his unchallenged rule over the tribe, the village headsman and his extensive power, and finally the father and his iron grip at home over the women and children. All these authority figures are male.

The authoritarian type poses numerous problems and presents many ramifications—ramifications much too important and complex to be comprehensively treated here. For now, it is important to understand that a person with the authoritarian personality is an extremist. He can be docility itself under certain circumstances and a maniacal murdering brute under others. He is the type who would just as happily kill or die, when he is directed to do so. He would, for instance, gladly strap on an explosive vest, in obedience to a superior’s order, and detonate it in a crowd of innocent civilians without the slightest hesitation.

* Blind obedience: A dangerous feature of the authoritarian personality is the relative lack of independent thinking. This deficiency makes the person highly amenable to manipulation. Islam, by its rigidly authoritarian make up, robs a Muslim of independent thinking to the extent that the believer blindly adopts it as his infallible system of belief. Hence, the religion of Islam is guilty of conditioning masses of people as easily manipulatable instruments in the hands of authority figures.

Studies have shown that the authoritarian personality type can be found among all people, including Americans. The important difference is in the degree and prevalence of the condition. Islam breeds vast numbers of extremists, while in America, for instance, the prevalence is significantly lower and less severe.

* Focus on goal: To Muslims, the goal is everything. As religious fascism, Islam condones any and all means to achieve its goals. The ultimate objective of Islam is the rule of the entire world under the Islamic Ummah—never mind that these life-in-hand soldiers of Allah disagree with one another regarding the Ummah itself and who is going to reign over it. That’s a “family dispute” that they will resolve by their usual favorite method—brute force. Each Islamic sect believes that it has the Prophet and Allah on its side and it will prevail over the other. For now they have to work diligently to achieve the intermediary goal of defeating all non-believers. There are countless instances that substantiate Muslims’ “End justifies the means” guiding principle. This policy dates back to Muhammad himself. Muhammad repeatedly made peace covenants with his adversaries, only to violate them as soon as he was in advantageous position to do so. Betrayal, deception and outright lies are fully condoned in furthering the work of Islam. In the present-day world, the work of Islam is defined by a deeply-entrenched and influential clergy who issue fatwa—rulings—that become directives and laws to the faithful.

Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic state, for one, made extensive use of the fatwa. Widely-known in the west is Khomeini’s fatwa condemning Selman Rushdie to death for his book. A less known fatwa of Khomeini during the last Iran-Iraq war led to the slaughter of thousands of Iranian children. Children, nearly all under 15 years of age, were given plastic keys to paradise as they were commanded by the fatwa of the imam to rush forward to clear minefields for the tanks to follow. The Islamic murderers, in obedience to the fatwa of a bloodthirsty man of Allah, had no problem in deceiving the clueless lads clinching made – in – China plastic keys to paradise.

Such is the existentialistic threat of Islam. It is a rigid stone-age authoritarian system with a stranglehold over many of the nearly one and a half billion people under its command.

* Fatalism: One of the greatest subtle, yet important differences between the Muslim’s mindset and that of the people in the West is the extent to which Muslims are fatalistic. There is hardly a statement that a Muslim makes without being conditional—conditional on the will of Allah. “I shall see you tomorrow, Allah willing,” “You will make it home, Allah willing,” “Things will work out, Allah willing,” and on and on and on. To the Muslim, Allah is on the job—on every job. Allah, with his invisible mighty hand, literally does and runs everything. “Allah’s hand is above all other hands,” adorns every imaginable space in Islamic lands—a telling point about the Muslim’s fatalism and submission to the omnipotent omnipresent hand. If something happens, it is Allah’s will. If it doesn’t, it is Allah’s will. The rank and file Muslim has little will of his own. It absolves him of any and all responsibility. This mentality is in stark contrast with the “take charge” and “can do” mentality characteristic of Americans and others.
* Psychological uniqueness: People as a group or as individuals are different and none is perfectly healthy psychologically. We all have a loose wheel or two as we travel the bumpy road of life. Yet, most people manage to stay on course most of the time, with perhaps a stop or two at a repair shop of a mental health professional.

Most psychological disorders are exaggerations, deficits or surfeits of the generally accepted norm—whatever the norm may be. When caution, for instance, is practiced past suspicion, then we have paranoia; when reasonable fear is exercised beyond any justification, then there is phobia. The degree and severity of a condition frequently determine the presence or absence of psychopathology.

Muslims share a common Islamic psychological milieu, they are on an Islamic “diet,” whether they live in Islamic lands or in societies predominantly non-Islamic. The psychological condition of any Muslim group or individual is directly dependent on the kind and amount of Islamic diet they consume. The Islamic diet has numerous ingredients—some of which are wholesome, some are dangerously toxic, and some are between the two extremes.

Over the years, the Islamic leaders have found it expedient to feed the masses mainly the toxic ingredients to further their own interests. Individuals and groups, for instance, have used the immense energizing power of hatred to rally the faithful; the cohesive force of polarization to create in-group solidarity; and, the great utility value of blaming others for their real and perceived misfortunes. Jews have been their favorite and handy scapegoats from day one. To this day, as true fascists, like the Nazis, Muslims blame just about everything on the Jews.

Providing a comprehensive inventory of the psychological profile of the Muslims is beyond the scope of this article. Yet, there is no question that the psychological makeup of a Muslim, depending on the extent of his Muslim-ness, is different from that of non-Muslims. This difference, often irreconcilable as things stand presently, is at the core of the clash of Islam with the West.

* Conclusion. Admittedly, the non-Islamic culture is no panacea. It has, however, one outstanding feature the Islamic lacks—it allows for liberty with all its attendants— good, bad, or indifferent. Those who have experienced liberty, no inducement is likely to make them give it up—particularly not the fictional promises of the Islamists that have failed in the past and are doomed to fail even more miserably in the future.

The best, yet difficult resolution of the conflict is to do what hundreds of thousands of Muslims have already done. They have abandoned the slaveholder Islam: they broke loose from the yoke of the exploitative clergy, renounced Islamofascisim, purged the discriminatory and bizarre teachings in the Quran and the Hadith, and left the suffocating tent of dogmatic Islam for the life-giving expanse of liberty.

Within the emancipating and accommodating haven of liberty, those who wish to remain Muslim can retain and practice the good teachings of Islam but renounce intolerance, hatred and violence. It takes great effort and courage to ascend from the degrading pit of slavery to the mount of emancipation. Yet, it is both possible and exhilarating to do it, since many have done so successfully and happily. As more and more people leave the shackles of religious slavery, more and more will follow, and the long-suffering Muslims, victimized by Islam itself for far too long, will be a free people in charge of their own life and destiny. It is a painful process of growing up, of asserting one’s coming of age, and marching lockstep with the free members of the human race.

Slavery of the mind is as evil as the slavery of the body. Islamofascisim enslaves them both.

One may think that Latin America is largely devoid of Muslims and safe from their menace. It’s not. Things are turning ugly there too. Here’s the first in a series of article to depict the Islamic menace over there.

Infiltration of Muslims in Latin America goes back to the colonial times since 1492, when they were brought as slaves from Africa. A small part of them were Muslims, and, over time, they managed to create Muslim communities in some regions. Those seed communities, aided by the influx of new Muslim slaves, kept Islam alive in the continent for centuries.

On January 25, 1835, there was an insurrection, called “Insurrection of the Malés”, in the city of Salvador (Brazil). The word “Malé” is from the African language ioruba “imali”, which means “Muslim”. Some revisionist historians later on tried to attribute this insurrection to racial reasons; but to the Malés, who waged the ‘Islamic revolution’, and it becomes rather more clear today that, they had a radical aspiration: To create an Islamic state in that region of Brazil.

The Malé revolutionaries were well organized and their first objective was to storm several police and army quarters in the city for grabbing weapons. Two hundred Malés were confronted when they were about to invade de Army Cavalary Fort. Three hundred tried to storm the police headquarters. Others went for the Infantry Fort in the city.

Luckily, the Brazilian authorities did react swiftly, thanks exclusively to one African woman, who informed the police about the planned Islamic insurrection. If it were not for this intelligence, the situation could have gone terribly wrong.

Most of the participating Malé revolutionaries were NOT slaves anymore. They were freed slaves and worked in their own activities or shops around the city, as merchants, artisans, shoemakers, tailors, masons, barbers and such. They had their labour leagues, through which they were indoctrinated with the Muslim supremacist ideology. Through meetings at these work-cooperatives that they did organize the Islamic revolution.

Objectives of the Malé Islamic revolution

Their main objective was not to fight social injustice and discrimination or to free themselves from “white oppression” as most were already free, but to:

Eliminate all Christians and the Christian faith in the region

Creation of an Islamic government

The blueprint of the revolution was written in Arabic. The planned extermination of Christians was to be independent of race: white or black. Their secret plan was also to kill the black Africans, who practiced Animist religions, although, ironically, those same Animists were supporting the Muslim revolution.

The timing of the revolt was fixed to match the end of holy month of Ramadan. When they went to wage Jihad, the Malés wore the typical Muslim white robes and hung in their necks small pieces of wood with carved sayings of the Koran, as well as talismans to protect them against the “jinns”, the nasty spirit in Arab myths.

An Islamic inscription (Quran 97) displayed
at State Museum of Bahia (Brazil).

Most of the Malés received Islamic education at young age in madrasas back in Africa. We all know today that madrasas, such as in Pakistan, are the places where Muslim kids are brainwashed with extremist teachings of Islam. And this is not something new, but has been a millennial tradition in Islam.

The rebels in the 1835 Malé Revolution numbered 1,500. One would think today that they were not so many. But in the context of present population-size in that region, this would mean something like 24,000 armed Muslim rebels today.

Of the 1,500 Islamic radicals, 70 died during the revolt, while 200 were arrested but freed later on. Seven were executed and 10 were deported back to Africa. This shows a considerable degree of leniency of the authorities, considering that if those Muslims succeeded in establishing the first Islamic government in the Americas, they would have not spared the lives of non-Muslims.

“Mr. President, Whose Side Are You On?”

By Doug Powers • June 10, 2010 04:22 PM

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

In light of the fact that all problems are solved in the United States and our debt and spending are under control, President Obama yesterday pledged $400 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian territories. The money was pledged during a meeting between Obama and Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama said he would not meet with the CEO of BP because “he’s going to say all the right things to me, I’m not interested in words, I’m interested in actions,” so it’s nice to see him have such confidence in Abbas to be honest and forthright in his ultimately successful attempt to get his hands on hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars.

Cassy Fiano calls it a “terrorist stimulus package,” and if it is, the only reason for optimism is the hope that a terrorist stimulus will work as well as the stimulus package. If Sheriff Biden is in charge of making sure the aid works as intended, Abbas is screwed.

The Obama administration’s promise of aid includes money to increase access to clean drinking water, create jobs and build schools and affordable housing. State Department officials called the projects “a down payment” on the U.S. commitment to improving life in Gaza.

Last year, U.S. officials pledged a total of $900 million for Gaza and the West Bank, but acknowledged the difficulty of distributing the funds, especially because Hamas controls Gaza and is considered a terrorist organization. The aid announced Wednesday may be distributed through organizations performing relief work, State Department officials said.

Sure. This aid will be different… it won’t be handed to the guys in the “Hamas” shirts, but rather to the nice folks wearing the “samaH” shirts (inability to recognize a t-shirt turned inside-out is a time-honored skill that’s been handed down through generations of United Nations aid distributors).

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana isn’t happy with any of this, and asks Obama what I’d consider the rhetorical question of the week: “Whose side are you on?” (h/t Cubachi):

According to exit polling on election day 2008, 78% of Jewish voters went for the US presidential candidate with a background that suggested he would empathize with the Muslim point of view (and I’m putting that so mildly that it borders on beyond sarcasm). I’m not Jewish, so if three-quarters of American Jewish folks don’t mind, maybe I shouldn’t be as concerned as I am. We’ll see what the numbers look like after the 2012 election.

The misogynistic Islamist Mullah regime of Iran are turning the women into sex-slaves…

Iranians protesting election of 2009
(Photo by Emiliya_1998)

With the approaching first anniversary on June 12th of last year’s controversial Iranian presidential elections, officials of the Islamic Republic are bracing for possibly millions of protestors pouring into the streets in a show of strength that could eventually spell the end of the government’s 30-year reign of terror and oppression. So terrified is the current regime, apparently, that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, on the recent celebration of Ayatollah Khomeini’s birthday, ordered all Iranians living abroad to return to their native land to be hanged or jailed for being “enemies of the Islamic Republic.”

The list of the Iranian people’s grievances against the Islamic Republic headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is long indeed, and includes the blatant and vicious oppression of women, manifested most pathologically in government-sponsored prostitution and sex slavery.

While the regime’s apologists put forth weak arguments and excuses for the blatant Islamist abuse of women in Iran—claiming, for example, that because there are female Iranian lawyers and doctors women are thus treated well and fairly—festering below this shallow surface remains a horrendous record of sexism and misogyny justified by classical, not “radical” or “extremist,” Islamic teachings.

Iranian Shah’s wife, before 1979 revolution

One need only look at images preceding the Islamic fundamentalist takeover of Iran in 1979 to see how poorly women have fared in the past three decades under what some Iranians consider a criminal occupation of their ancient nation. Says Iranian-American writer Amil Imani, for example:

“Under the late Shah, Iranian women were the most respected females in the entire Muslim world. These thugs who are currently running my native country are not Iranians but packs of Muslim wolves who are simply following the examples of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad.

“This misogynist religion of Allah is custom-made for the savage male. A faithful follower of Allah is allowed to have as many as four permanent wives—and replace any of them at any time he wants—as well as an unlimited number of one-night or one-hour-standers that he can afford to rent. But, woe unto a woman if she even has a single love affair with another man. Nothing less than death by stoning is her just punishment.”

Mr. Imani, an ex-Muslim co-founder of Former Muslims United, has good reason to make what sound to the untrained eye to be inflammatory remarks about the Islamic Republic, as he has watched from the safety of his well-appreciated adopted home of America the absolute oppression of his beloved Persian people, male and female, by rabid Islamists who use Islamic sharia law in order to establish a male-dominant, sexist and misogynistic regime that abuses, enslaves and exploits girls and women to the hilt. This exploitation and abuse include the kidnapping of girls and women off the streets to be enslaved in government-approved brothels, as well as to be trafficked in sex slavery around the Arab world and elsewhere globally.

Iranian brothels service male “pilgrims”

The government-approved or run whorehouses with kidnapped sex slaves who service male “pilgrims” and others are Iran’s “dirty little secret,” which mainstream media and human-rights activists may be ignoring as a “cultural idiosyncrasy” or “religious freedom” but which is in reality the cause of the intense suffering of thousands of Persian girls and women, as men have turned them into sex slaves, to be used in Iran as well as to be sold to men in other countries, including in the West, according to Dr. Donna M. Hughes of the University of Rhode Island.

Dr. Hughes is a “leading international researcher on trafficking of women and children” whose studies have included the trafficking of girls and women in such diverse places as not only Iran, Russia and Korea, but also the United States, France and Great Britain. In “Islamic Fundamentalism and the Sex Slave Trade in Iran” (2005), Hughes writes:

“A measure of Islamic fundamentalists’ success in controlling society is the depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights of women. In Iran for 25 years, the ruling mullahs have enforced humiliating and sadistic rules and punishments on women and girls, enslaving them in a gender apartheid system of segregation, forced veiling, second-class status, lashing, and stoning to death.

“Joining a global trend, the fundamentalists have added another way to dehumanize women and girls: buying and selling them for prostitution. Exact numbers of victims are impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in Tehran, there has been a 635 percent increase in the number of teenage girls in prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic conveys how rapidly this form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the city. The trade is also international: thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.

“The head of Iran’s Interpol bureau believes that the sex slave trade is one of the most profitable activities in Iran today. This criminal trade is not conducted outside the knowledge and participation of the ruling fundamentalists. Government officials themselves are involved in buying, selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.

“Many of the girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children to support their habits. High unemployment—28 percent for youth 15-29 years of age and 43 percent for women 15-20 years of age—is a serious factor in driving restless youth to accept risky offers for work. Slave traders take advantage of any opportunity in which women and children are vulnerable. For example, following the recent earthquake in Bam, orphaned girls have been kidnapped and taken to a known slave market in Tehran where Iranian and foreign traders meet.

“Popular destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran province judiciary, traffickers target girls between 13 and 17, although there are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10, to send to Arab countries….”

Hughes’s article also reports the breaking up of several prostitution networks thriving in Turkey and Europe, extending to Pakistan and Afghanistan as well. In the Islamic fundamentalist country of Pakistan, she explains, also exist institutionalized brothels in which these sex slaves often end up.

Islamic sexism and misogyny

Iranian women today
(Photo by Zoom Zoom)

While Islamist apologists may argue that sex slavery exists around the world, exploiting innocent girls, women, boys and men, the fact will remain that in these Muslim nations this human-rights abuse has become institutionalized, with government-run brothels in Iran, for instance, offering what is called mutah or a temporary contract that allows men to “marry” for sexual purposes women other than the four concurrent wives alloted by Muhammad. Many of these brothels are near “holy sites,” so that male pilgrims can “relieve their urges” while on a “religious” pilgrimage.

These sexist practices are justified by Quranic verses and other Islamic texts that proclaim women to be inferior subhumans to be used and exploited at will by men, who are given permission to beat and control them as they would property and animals.

“Also [forbidden to you are] married women, except those whom you own as slaves. Such is the decree of God. All women other than these are lawful for you, provided you court them with your wealth in modest conduct, not in fornication. Give them their dowry for the enjoyment you have had of them as a duty; but it shall be no offense for you to make any other agreement among yourselves after you have fulfilled your duty. Surely God is all-knowing and wise.”

Believers in a literal and eternal interpretation of the Quran/Koran seem to have only one place to go with this verse, which basically says that Muslim men can own sex slaves. Moreover, according to Islamic or sharia law, a woman has no right to divorce, as only a man does, a right he may freely exercise in some Muslim areas merely by saying the word talaq—”I divorce you”—three times. A man can then proceed to marry another woman and another after that by doing the same thing.

The notorious Quranic ayah 4:34 makes men superior to women and allows them to beat them:

“Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and forsake them in beds apart, and beat them.”

Woman in niqab in Yemen
(Photo by Steve Evans)

As concerns the guarding of “unseen parts,” in some Muslim sects, a woman’s entire body is considered awrah or “naked” and thus must be completely cloaked. In other words, a woman is wholly a sex organ. In other sects, a woman’s hands and face may be exposed, but the rest of her is a “walking vagina” and must be covered up in loose-fitting clothes so that no man but her husband-owner may see her shape.

Additionally, there are many hadiths or commentaries on the Quran and Muhammad that disparage women and essentially allow for their subjugation and enslavement. In the Tabari (9:113) or History of the Prophets and Kings, written in the 10th century by a respected Islamic scholar and theologian, we read the following about women:

“Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain, they have the right to food and clothing. Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Qur’an.”

“I stood at the gates of Paradise, most of those who entered there were poor, I stood at the gates of Hell, most of those who went in there, were women.”

Forced prostitution is illegal in civilized countries

While it may be argued that even the United States has legal, government-approved brothels, as in the state of Nevada, the fact is that forced prostitution is against American law and is generally vigorously prosecuted wherever it is found. The victims of forced prostitution in Western countries are not imprisoned and raped as they are in Iran and elsewhere, as part of the “religious” punishment according to Islamic or sharia law. Nor is the sexploitation of women in the West justified by “sacred scriptures” or “religious traditions” of any sort, although sexism and misogyny themselves are also common to the other Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Christianity, as well as other religions.

In the end, the fact will remain that according to mainstream, classical Islam, women are subordinate to men and can be exploited at will. As the Quran (2:223) also says:

“Women are your fields: go then, into your fields whence you please.”

Concerning the Iranian Islamic fundamentalists, Hughes states, “Misogyny is at the heart of their ideology and is the framework of their state structure and authority.” Until the world grapples with the fact of religiously justified sexism and misogyny, it cannot call itself enlightened and civilized.

In conclusion, the videos appended to this article give a sad view of what has happened to so many women in Iran since Islamic fundamentalists took over—as well as what happens to any nation that oppresses women and does not allow them the opportunity to pursue their own natural and God-given gifts and talents. As Dr. Hughes also says, “Only the overthrow of the mullahs and the defeat of their theocracy will liberate women from a system of contempt and hatred for women.” The lovely women—and men—of Iran deserve a much better life than they have been consigned to these many years, including the right to self-rule in a free, democratic state.

Posted By William Kilpatrick On June 14, 2010 @ 12:35 am In FrontPage | 21 Comments

Although many won’t admit it, we are in the midst of an ideological war with Islam. And since the advantage goes to the side that fully realizes they are at war, the West is losing. The propaganda war is going in favor of Islam precisely because the West doesn’t realize it is supposed to be fighting one. The ability of Islam to rally much of the world behind its hatred of Israel is a telling indication of who is winning the war of ideas. As for war aims, it’s not clear that there are any. Even those who see the danger clearly rarely talk in terms of victory; they talk mainly in terms of resisting cultural jihad. You know you’re in trouble when your ideological opponent is a primitive seventh-century belief system, and yet the best that your top strategists hope for is to put up a good resistance.

As the Dracula-like return of Communist ideology demonstrates, an ideological war needs to be fought to complete and total victory. The enemy ideology should be so thoroughly discredited that no one—not even its former staunchest defenders, not even the most doctrinaire college professor—will want to be associated with it. In regard to Islam, then, our aim should go beyond simply resisting jihad; it should be the defeat of Islam as an idea. But, aside from inflicting crushing military defeats on Islamic powers, how do you accomplish that?

One answer is that you do all you can to force Muslims to question their faith in Islam. As Mark Steyn observes, “there’s no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.” He was speaking, of course, of the more mushy versions of Western Christianity—the post-Christian Christians who seem anxious to dialogue themselves into dhimmitude. But there’s no reason the concept can’t be applied to Islam. Surely the average intelligent Muslim has occasional doubts about the founding revelations. And just as surely he keeps them to himself, not only because he fears his fellow Muslims, but also because the rest of the world seems to be going along with the pretense that he belongs to a great religion. It may be time for the rest of the world to drop the pretense.

If one of your opponents’ core beliefs is that you need to be subjugated, why wouldn’t you want to foster doubts in his mind? Jihadists commit jihad because they correctly perceive that their religion calls them to it. As long as they are kept secure in the illusion that their faith is unassailable, they will continue the jihad by whatever means seem most expedient. They won’t question their faith—and neither will the majority of Muslims—unless they get used to the fact that it can be questioned and criticized.

One man who has done a lot to shake up the faith of Muslims is Fr. Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest who hosts a weekly Arabic language TV program watched by millions of Muslims around the world. Among other things, the engaging Fr. Botros forces his Muslim audience to confront unflattering facts about their prophet. He also talks to them about the Christian faith—something that most Muslims know very little about, beyond some simple caricatures. Apparently he is very successful at what he does. According to reports he is responsible for mass conversions to Christianity.

Does such questioning of Muhammad’s character provoke anger among Muslims? Well, yes, it does. The elderly Fr. Botros has been labeled Islam’s “Public Enemy #1,” and a reported $60 million bounty has been put on his head. But, according to a recent piece by Raymond Ibrahim, “the outrage appears to be subsiding.” Ibrahim contends that Life TV (the satellite station that carries Fr. Botros’ program) “has conditioned its Muslim viewers to accept that exposure and criticism of their prophet is here to stay.” The first time a Muslim hears the moral flaws of the Prophet exposed, he may well be angry at the exposure. But how about the third time? The tenth time? The twentieth time? What initially provokes anger might eventually provoke doubts about Muhammad’s claims.

There are those who think that such efforts are doomed to failure—that Islam is too deeply rooted in the Muslim world. But deeply held beliefs are not always as deeply rooted as they seem. Thirty-five years ago it would have been non-controversial to say that the Catholic faith was deeply rooted in Ireland, but if you said it today you would be going out on a limb. More to the point, Islam itself was less “deeply rooted” 60 years ago in the Middle East than it is now. Consider this recollection by Ali A. Allawi, a former Iraqi cabinet minister:

I was born into a mildly observant family in Iraq. At that time, the 1950’s, secularism was ascendant among the political, cultural, and intellectual elites of the Middle East. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Islam would lose whatever hold it still had on the Muslim world. Even that term—“Muslim world”—was unusual, as Muslims were more likely to identify themselves by their national, ethnic, or ideological affinities than by their religion.

Deeply rooted? Perhaps you’ve seen that sequence of photos of the University of Cairo graduating classes for the English Department. The women of the Class of 1959 look like college students anywhere in the Western world circa 1959. They wear Western style skirts and dresses and no head covering. Ditto for the class of 1978. It could be the class of ’78 at the University of Chicago. But by 1994 half the women are wearing hijabs. By 2004 almost all the women are wearing hijabs and ankle-length clothing. So, sometime in the 1990’s educated Muslims apparently began to take their faith more seriously. They appear to take it very seriously now. But how “deeply rooted” is twenty years?

Given that the penalty for leaving Islam—or even criticizing it—can be death, we may be mistaking deeply rooted fear for deeply rooted faith. Moreover, the fact that Islam prescribes such harsh penalties for doubters suggests that the faith itself is not intrinsically convincing. As the Ayatollah Khomeini once said, “People cannot be made obedient except with the sword.” Any religion that needs so many external incentives—swords behind you, and virgins in your future—cries out to be questioned. Unfortunately, instead of exploiting its theological weaknesses the West insists on chivalrously shielding Islam from the kind of scrutiny that the West reserves for its own institutions and traditions. And with good reason. Because it’s generally understood, though rarely said, that Muhammad’s claims would not meet the tests of critical reason and historical evidence that we apply to the Judeo-Christian revelation. The much revered sufi theologian al-Ghazali wrote, “The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or his Prophet…” You can see why. Curiosity didn’t kill Christianity, but curiosity would almost certainly kill the Caliphate—or, in our times, the hope for a resurrected Caliphate. Obliged not to mention the Prophet? Given the threat Islam poses to the world and to Muslims themselves, it’s beginning to look as though the obligation runs the other way. The world needs to take a much closer look at the Prophet and his claims. The Prophet is Islam’s main prop. If he is discredited, Islam is discredited. Hence, the mighty efforts by the OIC to make it a crime to blaspheme a prophet.

The Prophet’s integrity is not the only thing in doubt. Theologically speaking, Islam is a house of cards. The whole faith rests on the belief that Muhammad actually received a revelation from God. But where’s the proof? Were there any witnesses to this revelation other than Muhammad? Why should we take his word for it? Why were there so many revelations of convenience that worked directly to Muhammad’s personal advantage? Are there really dozens of renewable virgins awaiting young warriors in paradise, or was this revelation simply a clever recruitment tool manufactured by Muhammad to provide an incentive for following him? And why is the Koran, despite its flashes of poetic brilliance, put together like a soviet-era automobile? As an exercise in composition the Koran would not pass muster in most freshmen writing courses. Why can’t God write as well as the average college student?

Ordinarily it’s not a good idea to go around questioning other people’s firmly held beliefs. But these are not ordinary times, and Islam is no ordinary religion. As any number of observes have noted, it’s partly a religion and partly a supremacist political ideology—although no one seems to be able to say exactly what percent is political ideology and what percent is religion. Is it 50/50 or 60/40 or 80/20? Is it legitimate to criticize the political part of it, but not the religious part? How do you tell where the politics leaves off and the religion begins? Or are they so bound together that they can’t be separated?

If you remember “Joe Palooka,” the old comic strip series about a decent but not-too-bright heavyweight boxer, you might remember that one of Joe’s craftier opponents once tattooed his rather expansive stomach with the word “Mother” inscribed within a large heart. His midsection was his weak spot, of course, but he knew he could count on Joe to avoid hitting him there, Joe being too much of a gentleman to do otherwise. In On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando’s character refers to the place where failed fighters go as “palookaville.” Currently, our whole culture is in danger of ending up in “palookaville” because there are large areas of Islam we decline to examine out of a sense of delicacy that would be excessive in a Victorian matron. Islamic strategists are counting on polite Westerners not to hit them in their soft spot.

Islamic strategists invoke the supremacist principles of the Koran in order to stir up aggression against the Muslim world, yet any criticism of Islam is met with cries of, “No fair! You are blaspheming a prophet and his religion.” So far, the shame-on-you-for-criticizing-a-religion strategy has worked very effectively. Fortunately, a few, like Fr. Botros, aren’t buying into the ruse. He has enough respect for Muslims as individuals to realize that their religion should not be put beyond discussion. Many Muslims, especially Muslim women, suffer a profound sense of desperation: the feeling of being trapped in a 1400-year-old nightmare, with no way out. It’s difficult to see any convincing argument for propping up the system that oppresses them. On the contrary, it seems almost a duty to undermine that system—political and religious—and call it into question at every turn.

In past ideological struggles we wisely sought ideological victory—the discrediting of the belief system that inspired our enemies. Because the driving force behind Islamic aggression is Islamic theology, it makes no sense to treat Islamic theology like a protected species. Rather, we should hope that Muslims lose faith in Islam just as Nazis lost faith in Nazism and Eastern-bloc Communists lost faith in communism.

Of course, it would be all the better if, like Fr. Botros, we had something to offer them in its place. Winston Churchill once said that Greer Garson, for her role in Mrs. Miniver, was worth six divisions in the war against Hitler. It seems safe to say that Fr. Botros, for his role in instilling doubts about Islam and giving Muslims something solid in its place, is worth at least a couple of Departments of Homeland Security.

William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in FrontPage Magazine, First Things, Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World, and Investor’s Business Daily.